大象传媒

I was 11 years old when world war 2 began. We had gas masks, ration books, and I remember that our iron railings and saucepans all went to make ammunitions. We knitted for the forces, balaclava helmets, gloves and sea boot stockings. I remember the black out, my father made heavy wooden shutters for the windows.
School was disrupted a lot as we had to go to the air raid shelters every time the sirens went. We were given Horlicks tablets to eat in the shelters.
I belonged to the girl guides and part of our war effort was to collect waste paper, we used to go round the streets with a enormous blue trek cart. We also had to take turns at washing up at the local old folks hospital.
I remember the bombs we had in our road, we had an oil bomb in our garden,incendaries and a high explosive one further down the road.
We had evacuees from Hastings staying with us and later we had a soldier billeted on us. All the local halls had been taken over by the Army, and it was fun watching the soldiers going on parade every day.
When I was 14 I joined the Girls Training Corps in preparation for the forces later, I became a sergeant. (When I was old enough to join up my father wouldn't let me go). My boy friend got balloted into the coal mines as a Bevan boy, and was later invalided out after a nasty accident underground.
V.E. Day was wonderful - my friends and I went out into the town celebrating with red, white and blue everywhere, pianos on the pavements and people singing and dancing. Everyone was friendly and we wore red, white and blue dresses. This was repeated later on for V.J. day. We also had street parties for the children and all the houses had flags at the window.

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